Brother mine
by Shulik
Summary: Where does Faith really come from?


Title: Brother mine

Author: Shulik

Downloaded From: .org/Story-20462

1. Chapter One

Disclaimer: I don't own Faith, neither do I own the BAU team or Tobias.

I don't own any of the pictures in the chapters.

I leaned against the building, with the cigarette dangling from my lips and my hands shaking in my pockets. Three days ago Willow had finally told me that they found Toby.

Toby who I was searching for the last five years. Toby who disappeared off the face of God's green earth. Toby who sang lullabies to me when I was little, and who helped me learn how to ride a bike. Toby, my twin brother. Toby who was shot after going on a killing spree and kidnapping a Fed.

The crazy must really run in the family I decided and threw out my cig.

Now, I had to convince the Feds that finally caught up to my brother to give his body into my care. I didn't want him buried in Atlanta, it was the place where most of our nightmares came true and it was the final resting place of Charlie.

To this day, I refuse to call that man anything else but Charlie. I turned and headed into the building. Security in the lobby started giving me the evil eye as soon as I stepped inside and inside I gave myself props for wearing leather to this little pow wow. If they started undermining me from the beginning and I got my brother's body back easier, it would make tolerating these bastards worth it.

They asked me for any weapons I might be carrying saying that I wouldn't be allowed inside while armed. I took out my favorite Glock, my crossbow, the two stakes in my boots, the dagger hidden in my leathers, the stiletto in my pocket, the stake in my elbow sheath and finally I reached up and took out the chopsticks out of my hair. By the time I was done piling up my little arsenal pile beside the guard, his friend decided to join and now both of them were looking at me with that look in their eyes. You know the look, it's the one where you can see them thinking 'Is she going to do it? Is she going to kill me today?' And no, I wasn't.

Toby took priority over everything. I flashed them my Council ID and immediately they relaxed into a more neutral pose. It never failed to surprise me over how far we'd come in the last three years. We now had permits to carry concealed weapons anywhere in the US, security agencies had to defer to us if we requested it, and me, B, and the G-man had bi-annual teleconferences with the Chief of State and the President.

The elevator opened to the BAU department and I stepped out, my head held high but my eyes constantly roving in search of an attack to come. I knew I stood out, my black leather jacket with my favorite black biker leggings tucked into tall buckled boots- the outfit screamed that I didn't belong here. And yet I kept walking despite the full on staring, despite years of conditioning reflexes telling me to run. As I stepped into the main area, all heads automatically turned to me.

A Meditarranean looking man in his fourties stepped in my field of vision.

"I'm sorry, are you lost?"

I shook my head.

"I'm looking for a David Rossi, I'm here to get information on where I can find a body. A specific body."

The man looked at me with his eyebrow cocked and his hand automatically towards his side. I assumed his gun was there, and I was a little amused to find out how easily I could read him.

"I'm Special Agent David Rossi, who are you looking for?"

I stretched out my hand in greeting to him.

"I'm Faith Leanne Hankel. I need to know where my twin brother Tobias is buried, there are arrangements that need to be followed."

-------------

2. Home

Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds and I sure as hell don't own Buffy. I wish I did though.

Warning: Mentions of rape, severe violence against children, torture and all kinds of badness.

I'm sitting inside one of their dinky little interrogation rooms about to be questioned on Toby and what the fuck went wrong with him. I don't think that they knew about me when they arrested him, I guess Toby hid my presence in his life real well if even the Feebs can't find any records of me. I slide out a cig from the pack and pat my pockets looking for the lighter, I might as well settle in for the long haul if things keep going like this. And just as soon as

I light up, Rossi comes in, all gentleness and papa-bear like inquisitiveness hiding the cold asshole I know he really is.

He sits down in front of me and the first thing he says is that I shouldn't smoke.

"Why? Is it prohibited in these rooms?"

"Not per-se, but it is frowned upon."

I look at him sideways, in his black suit and shiny leather loafers.

"Then by all means, frown away."

He leans back on his chair, maybe trying to copy my pose, maybe trying to get more comfortable but either way I don't give a shit.

"Now can you tell us why you're calling yourself Faith Leanne Hankel when we have you on record as Faith Lehane of Boston, California then London. Twenty five years old, currently employed as Deputy Director of the ISWC, an abbreviation that we've been having trouble deciphering. Why would a young promising woman like you try to affiliate yourself with a murderer like Tobias Hankel?"

I glare at him.

"First of all Columbo, I'm pretty sure you've already gone into my files and know that I'm an ex-con. Convicted murderer like Tobes. And second of all, by the time your techie cracks into my info, you'll see that I really don't have to sit here and take your b.s., but if it makes your decision to give me my brother's body easier, then by all means. Let's get down to what you really want to know and stop wasting each other's time."

He scowls at me, and I notice that he had a lazy eye. It makes me feel better that the Fed interrogating me about my brother is imperfect himself.

"Tell me about you and Tobias."

He leans back on his chair again and I have to resist the urge to shoot my foot out and trip it from under him.

"Me and Toby are twins, he doesn't like being called Tobias because it reminds him of Charlie. Charlie's our father, but you know that. We were born on December fourteenth, nineteen eighty. Toby's older by eight minutes, and he's held those eight minutes over my head for our whole lives. We're from Boston originally, but we moved to Atlanta for Charlie's new job. Our mom died while visiting her sister in Boston, but I'm pretty sure that she ran away from her last beating and Charlie caught up to her. He just hated to leave someone so obviously off God's path to their own devices."

I know I sound bitter, but my childhood has always been my Achilles heel. My dad an abusive fanatic, my mother dead, and my twin brother sent me off to Aunt Leslie before slowly going insane. I then ran the streets in Boston until my first watcher found me, started training me and got killed by Kakistos in front of me. I'm not even going to go into all the shit with B and them, I never had a happy childhood. You could write a book about this shit and get money from Oprah for writing a 'survivor story'.

I sneer before taking yet another drag of my cigarette, the grey smoke rising up into the air before coiling itself like a snake around my shoulders, listening to the account of my nightmares.

"Me and Toby have always been really close, all twins are. But I think with the fact that our dad was obviously batshit insane, and that we had nobody else, we became almost like one organism. We couldn't function without each other, we knew when the other was in pain- which let me tell you was not fun.

Charlie was a sadistic motherfucker, he used religion to justify almost killing us with beatings. Anytime we got a little rowdy, he'd beat us with his belt until he could draw blood. He hated the fact that Toby and me were so reliant on each other, he used to make us sleep as far away from each other as we could. Sometimes I'd sleep in the barn, sometimes it would be Toby.

Then, when I turned eleven, I started getting tits. Charlie began beating me every day for invoking thoughts of original sin in the neighborhood boys. I had no fucking idea what he was talking about, I was more or less normal, except for the abuse. I was even going to dance classes when I could, sneaking out with Toby's help and coming back under the cover of darkness with my twin brother covering for me.

Charlie found out about the dance classes one day, and that was the day that my life went to hell. He had his little Bible study buddies over, every Thursday like clockwork. One Thursday, as I came home after school I noticed that they'd been drinking. I tried to sneak upstairs to my room but they barred my way. My father ordered me to show them what I learned in dance class that day, and I knew that I had to if I didn't want a beating. I danced, and they watched."

I take a drag out of my cigarette, it's almost done. Reaching for the pack in front of me, I smile at Rossi who sits there like a big stone wall. Blank, unmoving.

"Tobias had always protected me, I was always the girl. The sister, the weakling. He didn't need to do that, he was too gentle for this world. He was too gentle for my father, he was too gentle when those fucks decided that they wanted to play rough with the twelve year old. But then, something in him snapped. He became cold, he wasn't my Toby anymore and he broke one of the guys' hands when he got grabby with me."

By this time, I know that Rossi started making a connection with where this was going.

A pretty little twelve year old in a house filled to the brink with overzealous forty year olds just screamed disaster. Combine that with the absence of my mother, my brother's emerging mental problems and anyone with a brain cell could see that this spelled a clusterfuck.

I remembered all the times I got punished for refusing to dance for the sick fucks who made up Charlie's friends and the familiar taste of bile in my throat almost threatened to choke down my next words, I refuse to throw up in front of this suit wearing, over-analyzing clown and start to tell the rest of my story.

"After a while they started getting out of control and Toby started getting angrier. After I'd come home from school, Charlie would make me show the dance I learned in class for his buddies. Pretty soon, they started talking about other things like how it God would want one of them to be the one to show me the Lord's Path. How because of my looks I had to be controlled.

They started saying that unless they were the ones to control me, I'd become a whore, that they needed to save me before it was too late. One day, when I came home from school and they told me to dance like usually, I told them no. That was the first time that Charlie locked me up in the underground cellar of the barn. The cellar is just big enough for a thirteen year old to stand up in and move a foot back, and a foot forward. You can't sit, you can't lie down. There's no light in it, no electricity. It's damp, and it smells like death.

Every time I would refuse to dance for them, Charlie would beat me and lock me down in there. He knew I was afraid of the dark, so he'd make me stay the whole night in there. One time, he broke my arm and stuffed me into the cellar. I sat there for twelve hours with the bone sticking out of my wrist. What Charlie didn't know is that every time he would leave, Toby would come down from the house. He'd sit next to the padlock and talk to me. He knew I was afraid of the dark and he spent nights just talking to me, singing songs so that I wouldn't be afraid. What I didn't know is that every morning, after my brother would leave the barn Charlie would catch him right outside the house and he'd punish him. Fuck…"

I gave a bitter laugh and noticed that my hands were starting to shake. Toby, Tobes, Tobias. Tobias… Tobias… Tobias… Tobias… My heart was beating in time with his name. I needed my big brother there, I needed him so badly I thought I was going to start screaming and breaking every piece of furniture in the room. He was my other half, he was my soul, my gentleness. He was the reason why I started on the path of redemption, I didn't want my brother to come looking for me only to find me in jail. Figures that by the time I found him, he was dead and buried for channeling Charlie and going all apeshit on the old neighborhood. The sick thing is, I knew that if there was a chance I'd get my Toby back I wouldn't care about it. Any of it. I'd throw away the years in prison, I'd throw away the Scoobies, I'd stop slaying. I would do anything, *anything* just to feel whole with my twin brother by my side again.

"Did you know what Charlie used to do to my brother? Besides the regular beatings that is? One time he branded him with a red hot poker for 'Not following the Lord's Path'. Another time, he broke his shoulder by beating him with a baseball bat. I can't tell you the number of times that he would tie Toby to a chair and put an iron on the low setting against his legs. He used to call it the 'Lord's education'. While my brother would be sitting there, getting the flesh slowly burned off his legs, Charlie would read from the Bible to him while spouting off against some shit he was particularly pissed about that week."

I exhale, the memories coming back fast and constant. Charlie had fucked both of us up in the biggest ways he could. I wonder if he would be proud to know that his kids were both on FBI's Most Wanted list at one time or another. Who knew that me- the little dancer from Atlanta and Toby who used to write poetry at night, would end up famous for our murders?

Rossi is still blank faced and watching me with silence. I get up from the chair to stretch my legs and star to walk around the room until I face the two way mirror. I can feel two presences behind it, and as I stretch my senses I know by the agitation of one of them that it must be . The Fed that Toby tortured, the one that eventually killed him. I wonder at the fact that I feel no anger for him, only a quiet gratefulness that Toby didn't have to live with Charlie in his head

anymore. I turn back to Rossi and look at the watch on my hand.

"Listen buck-o, we have about seven minutes before my identity becomes confirmed and after that, I expect you to tell me where my brother is buried so I can bring him home. I don't want him staying in Atlanta, I don't want him anywhere near where Charlie's buried. We've planned for our funerals since the day that we started getting regular beatings, it's a miracle that we survived our childhoods."

Rossi raises one eyebrow at me and makes a motion with his hands signaling for me to continue on. I shake my head and keep on talking while standing, too much sitting still is making me anxious and the vibes coming from behind the mirror are making me twitchy. The slayer is a predator and the noxious smell of fear that Reid was feeling, it all made me feel a little more animalistic than usual.

"One day, when I was fifteen, one of Charlie's friends raped me. He raped me, and beat me until I was bleeding. All the while he kept spouting off about how he was saving my soul. Tobias heard me screaming and he was the one to pull that fuck off me. He started beating him and eventually he knocked him out. I still don't know how my scrawny fifteen year old brother managed to knock out a forty five year old farmer but at that moment in time I didn't care. Toby cleaned me up,

we knew that the police chief wouldn't do shit to help us.

Everyone knew that old man Hankel was too screws short of a crazy train, and everyone knew that he was dangerous. So my brother did the only thing he could, he took all the money my rapist had on him, he searched the house for any money that Charlie stashed in there and then he took me down to the bus station.

He put me on the first bus to Boston and he made me promise not to come looking for him until he was sure that Charlie wouldn't come after me. We both knew that Charlie would try to come take me back, just like he did with our mom, and so Toby decided to stay with him to make sure that I was safe."

I look down at Rossi still sitting there, and I can see that my words had an effect on him. He looks a little green around the edges and his eyes hold a flicker of rage in them. I don't know whether he's angry at me, at Charlie or at Toby and at that moment I don't give a shit. The only thing that matters is getting Toby home.

"Special Agent Rossi, to this day I'm not sure what Charlie did to my brother when he found out that I was gone, but I know that you had to deal with the consequences. I'm not going to apologize to you for his actions, because no apology will make the memories of the time that spent with Toby any less painful. No apologies will make you think any better of us, and frankly, I wouldn't really care enough to try to change your views on my brother. I've spent seven years trying to track Toby down, I'm twenty two and I'm alone in the world. Three days ago I found out that my biggest reason for living has died, and all I'm asking is that you allow me to take care of my brother for the last time. Like he took care of me."

I light up yet another cigarette and at that moment the door opens to let a brunette woman inside. She looks at me with something close to pity and she slides a file over to Rossi. She whispers something to him that I really don't care enough about and he straightens up in his chair.

"Everything checks out Miss Hankel, we apologize for keeping you for any longer than was necessary. Here are the coordinates for your brother's grave."

He slides the piece of paper to me, and I stand up to walk out of the room. Before I leave, I stroll over to the mirror and hope that Reid can hear me.

"You need to know something. The man that held you in that barn wasn't my brother, it was my father. You gave Toby his peace and for that I thank you. I just hope you find yours."

Both Rossi and the brunette stiffen visibly after I say my bit, but I'm already walking out the door and pulling my cell phone to call a taxi. I'm going to fly to Atlanta, and then I'm going to bring my brother home. I'm going to be able to visit my twin, the second half of my soul regularly and I pray that he's going to be able to hear me wherever he is.

Atlanta, Georgia

The Hankel house.

1990

"Hey Toby, please wake up… Please don't leave me…"

I was ten years old and crying beside my brother's battered body. If he left me alone, I knew that I would do anything I could to follow him. I was ten and at that moment I would've killed myself just to go with my brother.

He slowly opened one bloodshot eye.

"Lea… I need you to promise me something… When I die, I need to make sure that I'm buried beside mom. I don't want to stay near Him…"

I started crying even harder, my ribs hurt after getting a kicking from Charlie, I was pretty sure that my pinkie was broken and everything was wrong in this world.

"Promise me Lea…" only my brother was allowed to call me by my middle name and I knew that I would promise him the whole world if it only kept me with him a little longer.

I nodded my head and my brother closed his eyes with tiredness.


End file.
